Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Eagles end up with split after long opening night

By JON FULBRIGHT
Staff Writer
The Pecos Eagles' first experience with the new "rally scoring" system for
Texas high school volleyball teams on Tuesday showed a few things will be
true in the 2003 season:

* The concession stands need to stock up on extra sodas, popcorn and
other foods this season - the matches this year are going to be long ones.

* Any team that can't serve well and can't handle serves well is in trouble

* Any team that falls behind by a large margin late in a game is going
to have a much harder time rallying for a victory this season.

The Eagles benefited from the last two items in their season-opening
match against the Van Horn Eagles at the Williams Center in Fort Stockton
on Tuesday, but were victimized by those same things in their second match,
against the Alpine Bucks.

The first match, against Van Horn, also showed that the new scoring system,
which eliminates service breaks and changes matches to 25 point best-three-of-five
games isn't going to speed up matches as its supporters claimed. The two
Eagle teams spend over two hours on the court to play just four games, with
Pecos coming away with a 25-21, 25-19, 15-25, 25-21 victory.

The match against Alpine lasted only an hour and 20 minutes, but that
wasn't good news for the Eagles, as they were swept by the Bucks, 25-14,
25-15, 25-22. Problems both serving and handling serves did in Pecos in
the first two games, while in the third game the Eagles tried to come back
from a 22-16 deficit, but couldn't avoid making three final mistakes, while
narrowing the gap to 24-22 at the finish.

"In that second game we had six missed serves. When we miss our serves
now, we're just giving them easy points," said Eagles' coach Becky Granado.
"In the third game, we did real well to come back. We hustled and never
gave up, but it's going to be hard to come back, because when you make a
mistake they're going to score, so the team that gets the big lead is probably
going to end up winning.

The Bucks' front line seniors Laci Langford and Aliston Pogue were able
to go over the Eagles' front line a number of times for spikes, but overall,
Pecos caused most of its own problems by failing to handle Alpine's serves
or set up their own hitters for kills.

Danielle Garcia had a couple of spikes and dinks for points late in Game
2, but that came after the Eagles had fallen behind by a 20-8 score. In
the third game, Leslie Rodriguez found some openings on the court to cut
a 17-10 deficit to 17-14, but a spike by Mimi Fort and a couple of Pecos
errors allowed the Bucks to eventually widen that margin back to seven,
before some Alpine errors and a couple of hits by Garcia and Bre'Ann Windham
got the Eagles back to within two points.

Against Van Horn, it was Pecos taking advantage of serve and service
reception problems to score wins. Four errors by Van Horn and a tip by Lilly
Valdez in Game 1 helped Pecos break a 20-20 tie to win.

Van Horn got some kills from Vivian Anchondo and Samantha Davis in all
four games, but they also had a number of late hitting errors that helped
Pecos win Games 2 and 4. The Eagles were able to maintain a six-point lead
throughout most of Game 2, while recovering from their own problems in their
third game loss to outscore Van Horn 6-2 in the fourth game to clinch the
match. Garcia had a spike to break a 19-19 tie, while Pecos ended up winning
on a bad serve by Amanda French.

"That's what rally scoring is going to be about. You can't give them any
free points," said Granado, whose team will face Lubbock Cooper and Plainview
in pool round play at the Monahans Sandhills Tournament on Friday.

Pecos' junior varsity was on the court even longer than the varsity on
Tuesday, winning a 25-23, 12-25, 23-25, 25-17, 15-10 victory over Alpine
at 10:30 p.m. after beating Van Horn, 25-12, 25-14, 25-15 in a game that
started 51/2 hours earlier. Pecos' freshmen also won their matches, which
were only best two-out-of-three, defeating Fort Stockton, 23-25, 25-3, 25-22,
and then beating Alpine, 14-25, 25-20, 25-19.